Cut Out: A Feminist History of Photo Collage, Montage and Assemblage

With this eye-catching volume, Rogers (coauthor of Firecrackers), a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum, makes a persuasive case for collage as a crucial but overlooked feminist art form. While the beginnings of collage are often traced to the “high art” of early 20th-century artists like Pablo Picasso, the author begins in the Victorian era, when women crafted witty, photocollaged images to express themselves and showcase their artistic skills and sophistication to potential suitors. Later, modernist artists created surreal cut-paper assemblages, and second wave feminists used collages to make political statements. Contemporary artists experiment with digital and high-res printing technology to investigate intersections of gender, race, class, and geography. Throughout, Rogers spotlights such artists as Dora Maar, who crafted surrealist photocollages in the 1930s; Lorna Simpson, an Afrofuturist who began exploring collage by cutting up her grandmother’s copies of Ebony and Jet; and Mickalene Thomas, who playfully recreates classical European art compositions with photos of modern Black women. Lavishly illustrated and containing a wealth of information on artists around the world, this survey is a cut above. (June)